When they say permadeath do they mean the game is actually over... start a new character? Or just start from a checkpoint or saved game? It would seems odd that there is no option to load a save game when you die. You either respawn, no consequences, or permadeath, have to start the game over again!
And yeah, "survival" mode and your health regenerates?!
When you die, you need to start the entire game all over again.Originally Posted by human_male Go to original post
Only to the nearest bar. It's not like you can just sit in a bush and wait for your health to go from 1% to 100%.Originally Posted by human_male Go to original post
SURVIVAL GAMES -
Yes. Not everyone's bag. That's fine... But that's the beauty of making a mode like this an OPTION. Those who don't like it, can play without this option turned on!
I'm a relative newcomer to Survival games, it started with The Long Dark (XB1)... It it opened my eyes to a new kind of experience, one that frankly evoked something primal (excuse the pun). Building a camp fire, being smart to find a sheltered outcrop of rock to avoid the wind, huddling around the fire for warmth, finding enough wood to last through the night so you don't freeze to death! It was utterly compelling.
I find these kinds of Survival mechanics augmented onto the a core open world game are often a natural fit and breaths life into otherwise many superfluous systems that already exist.
Fallout 4 is a good example of this. Building settlements, planting crops, hunting, cooking food, boiling water, drinking radiated water out in the open wasteland if in a pinch. Trouble is, you're never in a 'pinch' .... All these thing are frankly pointless, you never need to engage with any of it, because your pockets are over flowing with health kits!! However, the new Survival mode will breath meaning and purpose into all of it...
Chk the same sentiments reflected by Gamespot here - http://youtu.be/gKoUyvWOcRU
With Far Cry Primal - there was such an over abundance of resources and animals to hunt, you never felt you were surviving at all.... Exploring and looting was absolutely redundant. Finding loot bags that are filled with items you most likely already have is not satisfying or worth your time.
Far Cry Primal Survival mode for me breathes new life into the game. I personally feel that this is the way the game was designed to be played, but Ubisoft didn't want to go all the way for fear of putting some people off (players like you Horty S).
Survival mode makes for a more methodical considered approach that appeals to people like me.
Think about it, when did you ever need to sleep in a bed in this game? I never used it... Now it has purpose! For the first time I actually have a reason to go out and hunt in order to survive, as I didn't have a supermarket supply of meat on tap anymore. I now have a reason to go exploring because loot items now have greater usefulness as there harder to find in the world now...
It gives all the systems in the game purpose now. Which makes for a much more thrilling experience!
The main thing I don't like is just that it slows everything down far to much IMO. It slows your progression of upgrades way down, I do not like having to sleep all the time, (seriously, who wants to waste even 30 seconds playing a videogame having your character f$@king sleeping?) you can't even access the rewards stash from captured bonfires anymore so you have to spend time traveling all the way back to the wenja camp... uuuugh, just tediousness for the sake of tediousness... I guess I just don't understand why someone would prefer a more drawn out affair like that.... It's clearly just a different strokes for different folks sort of thing here, because I think that most of these additions slow it down and kinda make it much more of a chore to play but LaMOi here literally just called it "a more thrilling experience", which to me is the exact opposite of what it is... I thought the game bordered on tedium before survivor mode, now it's so far north of tedium you can't even see it on the horizon...
Again, glad they made this mode for all the people who wanted it added (mostly new fans who i guess want far cry to abandon what it once was and change it beyond recognizability of it's original genre, an open world first person shooter) but for people like me (a fan of the game before the radical shift in setting), I hope an eventual FC5 blasts us back to modern times... I think Primal had a couple of novel ideas, I really did like some of the elements to it, but the over-focus on crafting & resource gathering, coupled with narrative missions being pushed to the wayside and side-missions being sub-par at best drag it down a bit to much, in my opinion of course. More power to ya if this sort of thing is your bag, I just hope FC5 doesn't continue to push the franchise in this direction. I think there are more interesting ways this game could go than turning it into some sort of shelter seeking, stamina bar watching, resource collect-a-thon...I think there are better and more interesting ways to have survival elements even, ways that don't turn the game into a slog. Honestly I'd been interested in playing a couple of the survival games I've seen online but if this is what they're like I'm losing that interest fast...
Originally Posted by HorTyS Go to original post
Ark: Survival, The Forest, The Long Dark, Day Z etc.... What did you think these Survival games focused on? Building a log house in the woods? They all focus on management of Food, Water and Sleep which gradually deplete therefore requiring replenishing via hunting, scavenging etc. Granted it's not everyone's bag, on the surface they suggest repetition and tedium. I used to think that. But then I played the Long Dark. I was astonished how utterly compelling and addictive I found it. You see meeting these arbitrary needs sounds boring, but it's what happens trying to meet these needs and how they impact gameplay that creates some very dynamic experiences. Choices of what to do moment to moment become impactful.
I suppose the way I could put it to you is this - a game that has infinite ammo versus a game that ammo needs to be picked up. One will offer a unique experience the other does not - i.e running out of ammo. It's how that dynamic affects what you experience and how you play. The thrill of being in a fire fight, and then suddenly your gun goes 'click', empty chamber, no ammo left. You duck back down behind cover and are forced to think what you're next move should be!
Let me give another example, regenerating health vs health pick ups. Again create a very different pace of gameplay. I would certainly lean more towards health pick ups. It for example forces you to play more carefully, tactically, less run and gun.
All these examples are on the same spectrum of resource management, but instead of managing health and ammo pick ups your managing food, water and sleep.
And with regard to upgrade tree -
I think I had unlocked most of what I wanted in the first few hours of playing Primal.... Which then made looting, scavenging and ultimately exploring kinda redundant.... So to have a slower progression makes more of the game seem meaningful for longer.
That said, they should learn from games like Dying Light, which had a ton of interesting things to upgrade and unlock.. Primals skill tree is rubbish, it's smoke and mirrors. There's actually not a lot of new abilities to unlock, rather it's mostly health and resource buffs....... Boring.
I played the xbox preview trial thing of the long dark because it did seem interesting, but i got super bummed on the crazy slow movement speed that just drew out the exploration to an annoyingly slow pace to the point where I did not want to explore because it would take so long to get from point A to B. The way I feel about it is that there are more interesting ways to implement these systems that don't come at the cost of pace or progression. That may be fine for the games you listed, but I don't like the idea of plopping that on FC, because in my mind thats not what FC is about. Admittedly if someone at Ubi felt they needed to try to shoehorn elements of the survival game genre onto an existing game, primal was the one to do it on as it is the most setting appropriate. I just think there has to be more interesting ways to implement them without pulling the flow of the game to a screeching halt.Originally Posted by LaMOi Go to original post
One example of a system that adds the dynamic you seem to be pining for was in FC2 in the form of weapon degradation. This was a far more interesting mechanic that had a much greater effect, though because it wasn't quite executed in the most thought-out way. Many people were annoyed by it much, I imagine, in the same way I'm finding some of these elements in primal. Weapon degradation in FC2 added a unique new dynamic to firefights, but it didn't slow the moment to moment gameplay down, and the ways that it did were the ways in which the mechanic could be easily improved upon.
In Primal now, the dynamic is our stamina depletes and has an adverse effect on our movement speed and accuracy, the only way to rectify this... is to sleep? Really?. If you had told me that at some point I would be playing a game where sleeping is a necessary element I'd have to regularly do just to maintain regular movement speed or aiming accuracy I'd tell you I would never in a million years play whatever game that is. For one thing, your stamina should (slowly) regenerate when you just stand still, stamina is not something that only depletes and never refills. Regenerating stamina makes more sense than health honestly.
In FC2, the dynamics of degrading weapons was such that as your weapon's quality worsened, you'd start seeing it visibly in poorer condition, they start to jam more & more frequently and finally they'd explode in your hand. The cure for this was the less thought out element as the only way to fix it was replace the weapon, either by picking up an enemies, which were already quite deteriorated, or going to a weapons shop sparsely scattered across the map. I've ideas for better ways for that system to work, but the point I'm making is deteriorating weapons was basically a manageable resource like stamina is now in Primal, but one that did not adversely effect the moment to moment, it was just a factor you'd have to consider, but one that could be compensated for on the fly.
I've still not gotten to far in my survivor playthrough, though I've had to restart a couple times before just giving the finger to the perma-death mode (a setting that to me is bewildering anyone would actively want) but already I have thought of a couple ways it could be made less bogged down by obtrusive systems that seem to be there only for the purpose of making things frustrating under the veil of "difficulty". My point is basically this, I don't think that stripping accessibility or convenience is the way to determine a game's difficulty or challenge.
haha, wow, wasn't until I posted that response that i realized it was a vic_must_play like wall of text, I guess on this particular subject our passion levels have finally found equal ground...![]()
(Edit bit of a crossed post) Agree the up grades in Primal rarely excite and in fact sometimes feel like padding to me when they could have been pushing out some newer more radical ideas in the stone age setting.
I also think Primal should have embraced more looting alongside the crafting. Crafting need not be undermined if differences in the stats existed between Wenja, Udam and Izila weapons even down to differences with arrow flight arcs due to weight and balance.
Still I love the idea of a more complex game, I hate all the streamline it down to utter simplisticity maybe the old rpger in me.
HorTyS I do not see what you have against sleeping. People really need to sleep. I often slept through the nights in Primal before survival to me it just made sense rather than fending off all those wolves unless I say wanted to make a night attack.
Actually I like the fear induced by Permadeath but not sure the difficulty of the new mode is brilliantly balanced. I do hate the fact that if you die you have to go through the whole tutorial part of the game again as I have stated elsewhere that seems excessive.
My issue with sleep in survivor mode is that it turned an already dull mechanic into a requirement just to maintain a base level of playability. Yeah, i used sleep on occasion when I happen to be by a bed at night and just wanted it to be daylight, but to now be required to sleep just to be able to sprint at full speed? Eeesh.. That is my issue with it, arbitrary slowing down of the game under the veil of "survival" mechanics. Would I complain about it without a suggested fix? No! They should just make it so that stamina slowly regenerates if you stand still and maybe make it so you can approach a body of water and drink to refill it at a faster rate than meat currently does... Boom, I'd no longer take issue with a forced sleeping mechanic as there are now active alternatives to a low-level non-interactive system.Originally Posted by vic_must_play Go to original post
I agree with you on the looting. It doesn't make sense that we don't retrieve extra arrows from enemy archers or spears from spear chuckers etc. If we did though, that would make it so we weren't so reliant on crafting and resource gathering, so it would keep the pace to fast compared to i guess what they're going for. As for the complexity you speak of, what do you mean exactly? I only ask because I don't think streamlining and intuitiveness have to come at the cost of complexity, so I sort of wanted an example of a way you'd like to see the complexity upped or what you thought was overly-streamlined...
Here with complexity I meant the fact that all arrows for example are currently the same even though I suspect the tech used by the Udam, Wenja and Izila would be somewhat different. Also the idea that they seem to have nerfed looting as if that was needed to promote crafting I just do not see it that way. I think we should have had both - the complexity - being added differences between what you create to what can be salvaged from others. For example Udam spears could be heavier perhaps do more damage in melee but not throw as accurately or as far... I agree streamlining and intuitiveness should not come at the cost of complexity but somehow I think that Ubi like to keep it all very tight and streamlined and the way they go about that can seem to result is a loss of complexity in the mechanics. Another example the advent of the one way inventory stash system in Primal.
Since you have to survive killing an opponent to loot them I think that is good enough - especially if the game limits what you can carry so you cannot run about with endless ammo - but can if needed grab a few arrows or a spear or a club off a dead foe. Maybe a slightly less effective spear, club or arrow but in a pinch...
I have to agree that standing still doing nothing should perhaps very slowly regen stamina or to be honest it should go down more slowly in general. You should not really need more than the sleep any human being would reasonably need in the real world to stay healthy. (Cursed overly gamish mechanics bother me. To me it should be about more immersive play - more realistically challenging play - not just difficulty ramping). Of course you can get your stamina back if you eat enough. Not sure just drinking a river dry is a good idea - too much of anything is toxic. Although all that meat has got to be bad too can you imagine a tubby flatulent Takkar
PS drinking the river water unboiled is probably one of the reasons why they only lived to around 30.